Haydn: The Seasons

the performance matches the high standards of McCreesh's previous grand choral projects...McCreesh revels in Haydn's masterly skills in writing for orchestra, choir and soloists...The choir's... — BBC Music Magazine, June 2017More…

The Gabrieli Consort continue their series of award-winning collaborations with the National Forum of Music, Wrocław, Poland with a new version of Haydn’s great oratorio The Seasons. Using a new performing edition by Paul McCreesh this recording is the first to feature the large orchestral forces that Haydn called for, including a string section of 60, 10 horns and a choir of 70. As well as the combined forces of the Gabrieli Consort & Players, Wrocław Baroque Orchestra and National Forum of Music Choir, the recording features solo performances from British singers Carolyn Sampson, Jeremy Ovenden and Andrew Foster-Williams.

All booklet texts are printed in both English and Polish translations.

Reviews

June 2017

the performance matches the high standards of McCreesh's previous grand choral projects...McCreesh revels in Haydn's masterly skills in writing for orchestra, choir and soloists...The choir's tone is full-bodied yet never heavy...The soloists are expertly chosen...while McCreesh's conducting is responsive to every subtle shade within Haydn's grand spiritual vision.

Early Music Review
27th March 2017

The opening thunderous wallop on the timpani will warn you that this is a recording of some drama and punch...If you are not familiar with The Seasons, this is the recording to go for. Paul McCreesh's English translation is excellent, the singing and orchestral playing is outstanding.

May 2017

What emphatically sets this Seasons apart from all previous recordings, whatever the language, is the scale…the big choruses, toppled by a shining, un-wobbly soprano line, generate a visceral excitement unmatched by any rivals. In the cataclysmic thunderstorm, rasping, minatory brass to the fore, the terrified populace evokes Verdi's 'Dies Irae', while the autumn hunt, raucously fuelled by anarchic natural horns, has never sounded more uninhibitedly exuberant. In the wine harvest, with its final tipsy fugue, McCreesh conjures a Burgenland bacchanalia to rival Jacobs -high praise indeed. McCreesh and his massed Anglo-Polish forces have given us a Seasons that thrillingly catches both the work's bucolic exhilaration and its invocations of the sublime. And for sheer sonic splendour it's in a class of its own.

July 2017

the singers are an unmitigated pleasure to hear… top marks for Paul McCreesh’s latest achievement in large-scale Haydn performance

24th March 2017

McCreesh’s new translation is a triumph, and will surely have an illustrious career beyond this recording...One of the great joys of this set is the huge dynamic and emotional range afforded by the expanded forces – the introspective recitatives are, in their way, as spine-tingling as the 70-strong chorus belting out their lusty paeans to wine, women and weather.

Katherine Cooper

16th April 2017

Much is splendid: the big hunting, drinking and spinning choruses, for example

9th April 2017

This successor to Haydn’s Creation has often felt in the shadow of the earlier masterpiece, but this recording brings it thrillingly to life. Avoiding the early-music tendency to small forces, Paul McCreesh assembles a massive throng of singers and players, the numbers that might have performed the piece in 1801. And what a noise they make!...McCreesh’s fresh new translation animates the top-class solo singing, while the massed choruses blow the roof off. Glorious.

Early Music Today
May 2017

Some of the most satisfying moments come from the fine orchestral playing, in particular featuring some exquisitely lovely wind playing.

Classical Ear
May 2017

the playing is magnificent… eloquence is consistently uppermost, stemming from McCreesh’s singular passion shared with musicians who likewise respond passionately to every facet… superlative, all-encompassing performance